Fifteen years ago, a young Polish-Canadian filmmaker Eric Bednarski obtained an amateur 8mm film, 10 minutes’ footage of the life inside the Warsaw Ghetto, under the German occupation of the city during World War II. Inspired by this footage, Eric created a movie that combines the 10 minutes from the Warsaw Ghetto with survivor testimony, interviews with architects and urban historians about the reconstruction of Warsaw, and research into the Nazis’ unrealized plans for post-war Warsaw.
FestivALT 2019 artists Stephania Freda Leigh (Their Breasts, My Breasts), Betty Q (Madame Q’s) and Zofia Noworól (What Does Kazimierz Dream About?) come together for a public discussion about their three FestivALT projects and their uniquely individual approaches to the investigation of the female body through art.
Jews! Jews! Jews! is a Berlin-based minori-tease cabaret that was started in 2018 by Jewish-American artists Lolita Va Voom and Nana Schewitz. In their quest to “re-Jew” Germany, these two cabaret artists book shows featuring exclusively Jewish and minority artists
In English and Polish
Part theatrical production and part legal intervention, Justice is a unique performance that investigates the possibility of holding accountable the people responsible for the expulsion of Jews from Poland in 1968. For FestivALT 2019, internationally acclaimed director Michał Zadara is performing a one-man version of the piece. After the show, Zadara will stay for a talkback with the audience.
The Long Table is a situational dinner party, and conversation is what’s on the menu.
A woman of many photographs and one great gesture. When Amalia Krieger and her brother Natan inherited Ignacy Krieger’s photography studio, they decided to keep signing photographs with their famous father’s name. We know about what she did, we know about the way she worked. As for her thoughts and ideas—we will try to access them through her photography.
On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed. How many shall pass on, how many shall come to be? On Erev Yom Kippur, a young woman talks with her great-grandmother about her Jewish family’s past and future, about building a new queer family without betraying her history.
Women on Women is an evening of sharp, often irreverent performances that question fixed understandings of Jewishness and gender, religion and sexuality, entirely through a female lens. This year’s edition features Warsaw-based painter Marta Malinowska, New Orleans-based burlesque artist, Angie G, and Krakow-based furrier Marta Horowitz. The evening is hosted by the famous burlesque artist Betty Q and will revolve around themes of games and play.
For three years, Dr. Roma Sendyka, Dr. Erica Lehrer, curator Magdalena Zych, and photographer Wojciech Wilczyk have researched representations of the Holocaust in Polish folk art. Join the curators for a presentation about these uncanny, baffling, and at times deeply empathic works of art.
Jason Francisco's photo-text-installation work examines a part of the Auschwitz story all but erased from public memory, through a deliberate misuse of the historical practice of stereoscopy.
